Recent reviews by Timst

So there are basically two ways to do Early Access. You can do breadth-first, where you present a very early version of all or most of the features of your game. Everything is full of holes and bugs, but that lets you quickly iterate and try to see what resonates with players. Or you can do depth-first, where you only release a fraction of your fully-realized vision. In the past, these approaches would have been called alpha/beta and demos, respectively.

Now a lot of Early Access games go for the first one, and it's fairly understandable given how the EA program is presented to players (and devs, I imagine). You can test the waters with an unrefined idea, and see if it works before you invest a bunch of resources into finalizing the art and bug hunting and whatnot. I get it.

But Witchfire is resolutely in the "demo" camp. It's clear that there will be more content in the future – more maps, more gear, more concepts. But what *is* here is top notch. There are virtually no bugs. The UI, the animations, the enemy AI, the copy editing, everything looks like a released product.

And personally? I feel like this is the correct call. Witchfire as it exists now is a fantastic experience. You don't feel like you're paying the devs for the privilege of helping them debug their tech demo, which is what so often happens with early access titles. You get a full (if somewhat short) video game that fully displays what the studio is capable of, and that you can recommend to your friends with no reservations.

So don't hesitate and grab this thing right now. The concept is fresh *and* well executed. I like FPSes but I've always been mostly indifferent about soulsborne games, and this has really sold me on them. These guys are building something great here, and for once you don't even need to wait a couple more years for it to finish baking.

Haha. So I was mentally drafting my review in the shower, and my entire point was going to hinge on how the devs take the concept of "early access" very literally, and that the game is essentially an alpha, which is technically fine for an EA game, even though these days we're used to more advanced Early Access games. But now that I'm on the store page, I see that the game is not, in fact, Early Access. This is meant to be a fully realized game, sold at full price.

So now my review is going to be harsher.

This game is an unfinished, buggy, rough mess. The devs seem to push their code directly to the release branch (or at least have a very low bar for what gets to make it to players), because virtually every feature is very clearly work-in-progress. Text is missing, there are visual glitches everywhere, the UX is incomplete at best and irritating at worst, the economy is unbalanced, there are a bunch of hidden rules and undocumented quirks, this does not remotely look like a finished game.

There are entire features, like the terminal, which straight up do nothing. You can build a terminal and populate it with check-in stands and info booths and snack stores and so on, but none of this stuff has any gameplay impact whatsoever. Most devs would probably not even consider putting something this unfinished on the beta branch, but here it's part of the released game.

So why a positive review? Because, despite this incredibly unprofessional production, the game is still fun. It's on a razor edge to be honest: some features are so obnoxious (the road placement, for one) that the irritation always threatens to take over the fun. And at around the midgame (after maybe 10 hours of gameplay), the broken economy means that you essentially print money, removing most of the challenge of the game.

But despite that, the core gameplay? It's great. You get to have fun planning logistics for a complex operation, optimizing your airport and fine-tuning your fuel imports. There is an interesting progression of scale (which I'm always fond of in games) where you go from running a small grass strip that handles five biplanes a day to overseeing an international airport with 20 jumbo jets landing every hour. Sometimes you'll make small incremental changes, shaving off a few minutes off a process or introducing a slightly better service vehicle, and sometimes a real paradigm shift (like the arrival of jet planes) will have you completely remake your airport. It's neat.

So should you play this game? It's really up to you and your tolerance for roughness. I will say that the bugs seldom rise above "moderate" in impact. There are some that will ruin your day if unchecked (for example, sometimes a plane just won't start boarding), but nothing really bad like crashes to desktop or save corruption. Again, some might argue (correctly) that a released, v1.0, full version of a game should have slightly higher QA standards than "it won't totally break your run", and for these people, I would recommend leaving the game in the oven for a couple more years. But for those who don't mind roughing it a bit, there's good fun to be had here.

The theme and art of Terra Nil are all very cute, and it's quite nifty to start from a wasteland and end up with pristine nature teeming with life.

Unfortunately, it's not enough to make a game. And I'm not talking about the fact that it takes two hours to finish the game (and five hours to 100% it). This is the sort of thing that could be fixed in future updates. The problem I have with this game can't be fixed in updates, unless the devs are willing to completely change the design of the game.

You see, the game is marketed as a "reverse city builder" and an "intricate environmental strategy game". The implication here is that it plays as a complex environmental simulator where you'll spend a long time tinkering with various systems to get the ecosystem balance right. Screenshots of manual pages with detailed drawings of buildings and features like procedurally-generated terrain only reinforce that impression.

But that's not what the game actually is. In reality, it's just a puzzle game. You use building A to flip tiles from terrain type x to terrain type y, and then you use building B to turn them into terrain type z. Repeat for 30 minutes until you've reached all the arbitrary objectives, and you're done. What little difficulty there is only comes from the fact that you work with a limited budget that comes from placing the buildings in an optimal position, and you can't move or remove your buildings because this is, again, a puzzle game, and not an actual city builder.

I understand that some people might like it. If you like puzzle games, or if you enjoy the cute relaxing aspect of it, that could be for you (although at $25, I'm sure you can do better for less). But I find the marketing (both in the steam store and in the many, many articles I've seen published about it) too misleading to recommend it.

So I hesitated for a while to write a review, let alone a negative one, but I thought this ocean of positive reviews needed some important contextualization.

I'll start by saying that I used to love Dwarf Fortress when I first played it back in 2008 or so. I played hundreds of hours of it, donated to the Adams brothers a bunch of times, etc. I eventually lost interest after the DF2010 release (I didn't really like the underground caverns), but even then, at the time there was nothing like it.

The key word here is: there was nothing like it. Now there is. In the time since, a bunch of other colony builders – most notably RimWorld – have been released, and they are, objectively, better games, and what I would recommend to a newcomer to this genre. Let's explore why.

The Adam brothers were pioneers. They single-handedly created a brand new genre of games. But they're also not video game designers or developers by trade (they made games before DF, but didn't work in a studio or with other game creators). In the art world, there is the concept of "outsider art", art made by people who have no connection to the art world or formal education in artistic crafts. This often results in extremely unconventional, fundamentally different but usually technically flawed art. This is a bit what DF is: something that could never have been imagined by devs that have industry knowledge of city builders and management games, but also something that lacks all of the polish of modern UX research and game design.

A lot of people thought the primary issue with DF was its graphics. I didn't particularly mind the ASCII graphics. Arguably, they were clearer than many 16*16 pixel tilesets. In the Steam version, the artist they hired did a great job, but it doesn't really change the issue, because the problem isn't the graphics. The issue is that the UX is bad; game concepts are all over the place; you need to constantly read the wiki to figure out how anything works; the game doesn't offer a good way to figure out why your pawns are or are not doing things (I got stuck for a while with a dwarf that refused to mine, before I figured out that it was because he also had woodcutting enabled, and they're somehow mutually exclusive? Nowhere is this indicated in-game, of course); you have to constantly fiddle over job prioritization and workshop management; keyboard navigation is broken; and so on, and so forth. There has been very slight improvements since the 2000s, but nowhere near close enough to bring it to modern standards.

All of this makes playing the game unnecessarily frustrating and irritating. Back in the day, it was the only game in town, so we accepted it. But that's the thing, this is no longer the case. It's no exaggeration to say that RimWorld has taken everything that was good about DF, streamlined it, and improved it, to the point where it's unquestionably the better game (this is doubly true because RimWorld has Workshop support, so everything that was left unpolished has now been improved a second time by the community). Yes, RimWorld is less intricate than DF, but mostly in ways that don't really matter to gameplay. It's cool that DF has, like, 50 types of rocks arranged in geologically accurate patterns. It's also unnecessary, since all rocks more or less behave the same way. It's super neat that they made this extremely elaborate world generator that simulates erosion, trade patterns, and local myths. It's also almost entirely inconsequential to Fortress mode, and Adventurer mode has always been a bit of an afterthought (to the point that it's not even in the Steam version yet).

One thing that I will say RimWorld lacks is a sense of scale. In DF, you go from 7 dwarves to hundreds, and this completely changes the game, forcing you to adapt your management style and to put some thought into organizing your colony. In RimWorld, you go from 1-3 people to, like, a dozen, so you never get that aspect (there are mods to increase that limit, but the game isn't designed for it so it works poorly). But RimWorld isn't the only alternative: Songs of Syx is another excellent successor game that does have this sense of scale, where you get to build giant cities by hand with the same level of micromanagement as DF (as opposed to more general city builders or Anno-type games). The UX in Songs of Syx is a bit more wonky, but it's still streets ahead of Dwarf Fortress's.

So. Dwarf Fortress, for its time, was an amazing game. It created an entire new genre of colony builders, and paved the way for some of the best games of our generation. Its world generator is an incredible piece of art and technology, and it's no wonder that it got showcased at MoMA. But more than any other art form, video games are inextricably tied to technology, and the past decade or so has seen a lot of development not just in graphical or AI tech, but in UX and game design. You can see that by playing one of the first Tomb Raider, or Goldeneye on Nintendo 64: legendary games, yes, but once you remove that and ignore the nostalgia factor, you're left with games that are frankly unpleasant to play, compared to modern action games or shooters.

Now, you could say that unlike these games, Dwarf Fortress is still in active development, and so its issues could get fixed over time. I suppose it's possible, especially now that they've hired another dev, but given how little has changed in 15 years, I doubt it. If that's ever the case, I'll come back to this review and edit it. In the meantime, if you want a good colony builder game to play in 2023? Play RimWorld.

I don't often feel compelled to leave reviews, especially negative reviews, but man, this is not good. It's especially not good given how much they're asking for it.

Everything is minimal effort:

• The gameplay consists of a rail shooter with some exploration on foot. That's it. There's no hand combat, no stealth, no crafting, no puzzles, no leveling, nothing else but riding the train and occasionally checking out points of interest along the way.
  
  
• The characters all have between 3 and 6 lines of dialog (which they deliver without moving their mouth). There's no depth to them or to the world in general.
  
  
• The quests all last 30 seconds and contain such thrilling plotlines as "can you go fetch some fuses in my garden shed" and "oh boy my cabin directly underneath a water tank is on fire, whatever can we do".
  
  
• The "upgrades" to your train consist of four different guns (all unsatisfying to shoot), and almost imperceptible increases to your train's speed, health, and damage output. That's it. That's the entirety of the upgrade system.
  
  
• The environments (well, *the* environment, singular) is reasonably well made and atmospheric, but it's populated with the same assets recycled over and over again, so it all kinda look the same.
  
  
• The overall story is paper thin and makes very little sense. An evil robber baron type wants to control the evil train to make more profit. It's never explained exactly how or why.
  
  
• The game lasts around 2h. There are three miniature dungeons, a dozen or so side-quests, the final battle, and that's it. Now there's nothing wrong with a short game, but then you should either ask a commensurate price or offer a memorable experience, and this game does neither.

The only positives that I can name are this:

• The auto save system is astounding. Despite the fact that the game is all real time, you can leave at any time and it will have saved your progress seamlessly. That's very neat.
  
  
• No bugs as far as I could tell
  
  
• They came up with their own lockpicking minigame instead of reusing the Elder Scrolls one like everybody else
  
  
• You can blow the train horn

There is something to this idea. It could be fun to have a sort of open-world RPG based around a train that you can upgrade and customize. But this is not it, and it would take so much more work to reach that point that I don't think it ever will.

There are a lot of small issues with ZERO Sievert, but the core is very good and I have thoroughly enjoyed my 20h (so far) of game time, so that's an easy recommendation for me.

Thematically, the game borrows very heavily from S.T.A.L.K.E.R and its sequels. The whole setting is a ~Russian-speaking area where a nuclear accident has generated strange anomalies and artifacts. You have bandits, independent "hunters" (read: stalkers), scientists and the army vying for power in a range of swampy forested areas and derelict urban zones. Even the equipment – especially the weapons and armors – is very similar, down to the famous SEVA suit.

Gameplay-wise, it's an extraction shooter, a genre that's increasingly popular these days. The natural comparison point here is Escape from Tarkov, again because of the similar lore and environment, but ZERO brings two major differences to the table: it's a singleplayer, offline game; and it uses a top-down, pixel art style. Together these changes elevate the game and turn it into its own unique experience, which is very refreshing. The core gameplay loop is great, the game is difficult but not punishing (if you die, it rolls back to the start of the instance and you can simply try again), it's overall very addictive.

As I mentioned, not everything is perfect. It's clearly Early Access, so expect some lackluster story and quest lines, missing features, and some bugs. For an EA game it's solid though: I haven't had any crash to desktop or anything really critical, none of the bugs are really that impacting. The game could also use a few quality of life improvement when it comes to inventory management, the balance could be reworked a bit (you get the opportunity to get a very strong gun from an early boss, which makes things arguably too easy) and the copy/translation could use a second pass, but that's about it.

The game is off to a very good start and should only improve with time. Play it!

Had a great time on Suzerain. I'm often skeptical of this type of games, which forces you to make decisions you wouldn't make, and that have unpredictable results (for a particularly egregious example, see Save The Queen), but Suzerain mostly avoids this: you usually have plenty of choices, your advisors clearly inform you of the potential ramifications of your decisions (you have to take into account their biases though), and major turns typically comes with ample warning.

There is one very bad design decision though, and it's the ironman format. I ended up with a pretty bad ending which was very unsatisfying (a neighboring empire invaded, I made all the preparations for the start of the war, and... fast forward to the end of war, I have lost and I end up in jail for the rest of my life. No resolution on any of the dozens ongoing plotlines, everything I've done ended up not mattering in the slightest), and since I didn't back up my save (located in <home>\AppData\LocalLow\TorporGames\Suzerain\Suzerain, for reference), that was it. 10 hours on that run, gone. I tried to start a new game, but I honestly didn't have it in me, and the whole thing left a pretty bitter taste in my mouth. Back up your saves.

A very cute game that kinda overstays its welcome.

The concept of the game is pretty cool: it's an adventure game, but one that focuses on the relationship between the two main characters. Rather than taking the easy way of exploring how they met and fell in love (as in pretty much every other piece of media ever), the game looks at a relationship that's already established, something that is much more difficult to compellingly depict.

The usual gameplay loop consists of exploring the world to gather ship parts and food, before returning home to eat and sleep. Every time you do that, you get a little cutscene depicting some aspect of life together. Maybe they're cooking. Maybe they're cleaning the ship. Maybe they just had sex. Maybe they're discussing the future, or reflecting on the past. This is Haven at its best, especially since in 15 hours of gameplay and many nights spent on the ship, I never had any of the scenes repeat, so it stays fresh throughout.

The same unfortunately cannot be said for the rest of the gameplay. You're going to have to travel through the same maps, manually (there is a kind of fast travel system but it's very restricted), fighting the same monsters (the combat system is original, but not particularly fun), suffering through the same unskippable cutscenes, and listening to the same barks. The crafting system is perhaps the most tedious part of this: making a new item requires adding elements one by one (which takes 3 seconds), then watching an (again, unskippable) cut scene (another 5 seconds) before a splash screen appears (2 seconds – yes, I've timed it all). So it takes 10 seconds to craft a single item. You can bring 4 types of battle items with you, and you can have 5 of each, meaning that to craft a full complement, you will need 200 seconds at the very least, or more than three minutes.

None of this would be a very big issue if the game was shorter. But despite not being super long in the grand scheme of things (it took me 15h to complete), with these mechanisms, and given what it's trying to achieve, it's still a bit too long. Haven falls in the classic trap of having cool animations at the expense of a practical UX.

Still, the game is very much worth trying. The graphics are clean and pretty, the music is excellent (I actually discovered the game through its main theme being suggested on my Spotify Discover Weekly, lol), the worldbuilding is creative, the dialog feels genuine (it's not nearly as naive and cutesy as one might fear), and the story and angle are novel. A nice game for fans of romance.

This game is the definition of a rough gem. It's fun to play, and I've found myself mildly addicted (haha!), going back to it over and over again over the last week. This is not something I experience with a lot of games, and arguably this is all you can ask from a game. I tend to agree, which is why I'm recommending.

But good god is it messy. Everything is rough:

- The writing. There are dozens and dozens of typos. When it's in texts it adds to the immersion. When it's in the UX, less so.
- The map design. What you can or cannot parkour off is a bit arbitrary. Prepare to get stuck against stuff pretty often, especially at night.
- The gameplay. The base gameplay loop is solid and fun, as I said. But some features make very little sense: there are two "risk" sliders, representing how visible your operation is to the authorities. They're both described in similar terms, and seem to work in the same way. Why two, then? What's the difference? Do they have different effects? Unclear. Also, reducing these meters is unintuitive: the main and most effective method is dealing at night. Note that it doesn't generate *less* visibility, which is what the in-game help implies: instead it effectively lower your *existing* visibility, meaning that you can go from enemy #1 to ghost in the machine by running around at night and dealing more drugs. A bit odd to say the least.
- The QA: I had items duplicate in my inventory, notifications not syncing up, cops stopping the chase for no reason, all sorts of small issues. Nothing game breaking and no crashes though, so that's good.

Then there are mechanics that are a bit odd, but that I ended up liking. For example, a big feature is the ability to cut your drugs with additives, like salt, baking soda or ibuprofen. This is a cheap way to get more product, but some additives will change the properties of the drugs, making them more addictive or dangerous. But the game doesn't give you any kind of data on that. You have to experiment, making different mixes and keeping track of what seems to work (the only signals you'll get are your customer complaining if the quality is poor, if they get addicted, and if they OD or die). It's a bit disorienting (how am I supposed to know what works? Why would I ever use washing powder?), but it's actually pretty realistic (I'm guessing real world dealers don't get detailled trip reports from their users either), and it's a bold idea to put in place. I'm into it. (Also, I'm guessing all this info is available on the wikis anyway).

So yeah. It needs work, and more than new features it needs some bug fixing (and proofreading!), but the base experience is solid and the game is really fun already. Looking forward to seeing it evolve :)

So this is a cute little game. It's extremely grindy, and I think this is the kind of game that works best as the video game equivalent of knitting: something to keep your hands and part of your brain busy while you listen to a podcast, audiobook, etc.

A few notes:
- It's very kid-friendly, to the point where grown-ups might find it a bit too saccharine. There are hints of darkness in the backstory (which doesn't go very far), and absolutely everybody in the game is incredible horny for the main character, but beyond that, it's very sweet and naive.
- It's grindy and not super well balanced. There's little to do in the early game, then after a few in-game days the game hits its stride and there is a wide variety of things to do and stuff to achieve, which is quite fulfilling. The end game is frustrating: it's heavily based on RNG, where you need to wait for a specific item/animal/character to appear, so you end up spending weeks waking up and checking the place(s) where they could appear repeatedly. Balance breaks down toward the end too: some of the unlockables make cooking an infinite source of money. Others remove the season lock on fish and bugs, long before you find a tool to control the seasons, by which point you no longer need it.
- Completing the game 100%, as I did, is even more grindy. Some achievements (in particular the last achievements for mining, woodcutting and fishing) are set far too high: the wood and ore ones require you to hit trees/ores 6500 times, even though you need maybe 2000 of each to complete the rest of the game. That means that you're going to have to invest another 5-10h or so repeatedly hitting trees and stones. This was so boring it almost retroactively ruined the game for me: I would suggest having "reach lvl 99" in each skill to be the achievements instead, which are challenging too but at least can be reasonably attained within a playthrough.